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Comment by ken | Hacker News Reader

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc.

Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.)

The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but they are a pain in the rear to use. It's high time to relegate them to second-class status, like Roman numerals.

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I just saw this on social media the other day:

Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?"

Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that."

(For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 months.)

Edit: Apparently, I -- and the very funny person B -- were misinformed. Jan and Feb were inserted, and different months were renamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

I'm not sure this is correct; July and August were renamed, yes, but not inserted. They did steal days from February, which was originally the last month of the Roman calendar.

Ah yes, you are correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

So Jan and Feb were inserted.

I have to leave the original up as it is because the joke is too good, but I will leave this note as a correction.

It's not so much "inserted", as they just changed which month they considered the first. The roman first month was March, but it still took place in the spring.

They were inserted. Previously the months ran from March to December and the remaining time didn't belong to any month.

They were not inserted, they were renamed. The year began in March, so the names of September-December make sense within that context. The start of the year changed later, making the names incorrect.

That made me chuckle, but apparently it’s a bit more nuanced. According to Wikipedia:

> It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar, it being the month of his birth. Prior to that, it was called Quintilis, being the fifth month of the 10-month calendar.

This stuff is fascinating. Reminds me of how the Romance language weekdays are named after the Roman pantheon and the Germanic (including English) weekdays are named after the approximate germanic counterparts for those same Roman gods.

The Sanskrit names for the days of the week are named after the same planets. I think both the Indians and the Graeco-Romans originally got them from the Babylonians who were the authority for all things astronomical and astrological in the ancient world.

This isn’t actually true, July and August were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis. The off-by-two is because the original roman calendar had ten months, with winter not having named months. (See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar)

Caesar and Augustus didn't insert those months, they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis in their honour.

The reason for the discrepancy in names is due to the fact that March used to be the first month of the year. It was changed to January hundreds of years before Caesar came along, so the naming scheme was already 2 months off by that point.

> March used to be the first month of the year. It was changed to January hundreds of years before Caesar came along

Depends on your perspective. In the US (really, in Britain), this change occurred during the lifetime of George Washington, who arguably lived hundreds of years after Caesar.

and our (UK) tax system still hasn't caught up, starting on the 5th April.

In Polish months are named after plants that bloom then and weather conditions. Quite poetic to say "I will meet you on the 5th day in the month of linden trees" :)

The funny thing is that other Slavic countries use similar names but some are moved 1 month back or forth because flowers bloom earlier/later there :)

And days of the week are simply numered starting with sunday = "niedziela" (not working day), "poniedziałek" (after not working day), "wtorek" (secondary day), "środa" (middle day), "czwartek" (fourth day), "piątek" (fifth day) and "sobota" (sabbath).

I never remember the names of the roman months and have to count them starting from january.

In Slovenia we used to have the old Slavic names for months, but somewhere around my or my parent’s generation they completely died in favor of roman months.

My grandpa is still fluent in them, my parents knew about them and probably knew how to use them once upon a time, I know them as something you see on very old calendars and a curiosity we learned about in kindergarten.

All I remember is that my birthday month, October, is called listopad because it’s when leaves fall down

That's the thing with moving the months back and forth :), in Poland listopad is November, and October is październik (comes from paździerz (chaff?) - the husks of grains separated by threshing it).

Actually you know what, I messed it up. Listopad is November. October is vinotoč because it's when young wine turns into real wine.

Just goes to show how little this stuff is used nowadays :D

Although wikipedia[1] says that listopad is an alternative name for October. I am now sufficiently confused.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_months

Ancient Greek month names usually identify a holiday that happens that month. The question of how different cultures name the months is interesting in its own right.

Interesting. So my grandmother's maiden name "wrzesień" has a meaning beyond "September" (according to Polish-English translations)?

I don't know for a fact it had the accent over the last letter. Records here in the US exclude it, of course that hardly means it wasn't there originally.

The word is derived from "wrzos" = heather.

wrzos (heather) is a plant that blooms in early autumn, hence the name wrzesień.

Also it's not accent, it's softening of the n sound, similar to Spanish n with ~.

Yes I should have said, "diacritic"

It's worse than that: some of the months are latin-numbered, but due to renumbering the numbers are wrong.

September = sept = 7 = month 9

Octobeber = oct (as in octal) = 8 = month 10

November = nov = 9 = month 11

December = dec (as in decimal) = 10 = month 12

Now thank you for that... I wasn’t aware of this, but will probably never forget it again. You ruined these months for me! :-)

So we have the solution! Just put them back in their original order and call every other month N-ember!

I was about to comment on how this is because July and August were added in honor of Julius and Augustus Caesar, but it turns out they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis (which would also be misnumbered). It was really January and February that were added later, causing the off-by-2 error :)

Source: https://www.crowl.org/Lawrence/time/months.html

Hebrew days are numbered as well (first day, second day, third day), with the exception of saturday. 3 months before november isn't bad, though, at least imo, although I do convert everything to numbers as soon as I can. So november -> 11 -> 8 -> august. But I know what number is associated with every number; don't have to count up.

> Quick, what's 3 months before November

Wow. It took me a second, which is weird since I have no trouble seeing 11/5 and 8/5 as November and August Fifth, respectfully.

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